Wednesday, March 28, 2012

The Graduate School of Education (GSE) and Pearson will team up this week to announce technology that will help New York schools transition to a forthcoming “Response to Intervention” system, or RtI.

Intended to close the achievement gaps between students, RtI matches instruction and interventions to actual student needs. In addition, the system helps identify students struggling with such subjects as reading and math in order to intervene before the problem becomes insurmountable.

Starting July 2012, all New York state schools must have an RtI plan established.

To help schools transition smoothly to RtI-structured curricula, GSE’s Rosa A. Hagin Consultation and Early Childhood Centers will join Pearson on March 29 to present technology known as AIMSweb.

AIMSweb is a system that benchmarks student learning and monitors students’ progress over an extended period of time. All students are assessed three times per year and at-risk students are monitored monthly. Results are then communicated to students, parents, teachers, and administrators via a web-based reporting system.

To learn more about the system, join GSE and Pearson March 29 in the 12th floor lounge of the Lowenstein Center, Lincoln Center campus. Registration opens at 8:15 a.m.

The event is open to the public and is free to Fordham faculty and students.

Friday, March 23, 2012

Below is a transcript of remarks delivered by Peter Vaughan, Ph.D., dean of the Graduate School of Social Service, at the Call For Unity service on March 21.

Over the past several days I have wondered if I should have agreed so readily to participate actively in this service when approached by Monsignor Quinn. Putting my thoughts and feelings into words to share with you has been difficult for me to do. It has dredged up old unpleasant memories and made me wonder if and when such incidents that recently occurred on this campus will end. One definition of reflection is careful thought, especially the process of reconsidering previous actions, events, or decisions. That’s what I have been doing in earnest over the past several days.

I am an African American who grew up in the segregated south, participated in multiple civil rights activities of the 1960’s and 1970’s and was a poverty warrior in President Johnson’s War on Poverty during the late 60’s and 70’s. Four decades ago plus several years when I began my career I expected that by this time in my life I would have witnessed the last of the hateful incidents that have brought us here today. Sadly incidents of this nature are no longer only found scribbled on the walls of public toilets, buses and the sides of buildings as they were in the South of my youth, but they have invaded the buildings on the streets of New York and other cities, and they have found their way on to the campuses of Fordham University, a place where many of us have come expecting to live and learn in an inclusive accepting environment, an environment where we hoped we had escaped so much of the written ugliness and the underlying intentions of those who take the time to scrawl such ugliness on walls in public places.

When I left the south of my youth to go north to college one could see boldly written the “N” word in public places accompanied by messages that were meant to offend those persons who were identified with the “N” word. While my family, friends and neighbors were offended by them, those mean messages were accepted as a part of life and there was little to do about them but feel hurt and work a little harder to compensate for the inadequacies that we often felt because of such negative and judgmental hate language from people who didn’t even know us. People not only wrote things they also said mean and ugly things to African Americans, yelled them from passing cars, used slurs in the course of doing business, and if you read the book or saw the movie “The Help” you have a reasonable knowledge about how many African Americans who worked in service positions in the homes of “well bred” white people were treated.

In preparation for these few remarks today, I have reflected on my undergraduate college experiences in the liberal north, and I am reminded that there were no scribbles in the hallways in the dormitories and classrooms, but there were unkind things said everyday about people like me, and if I raised objection as I often did, I was told that I was “too sensitive” or asked if I couldn’t take a joke. I was the only black in my dormitory, and because of my limited face to face contact with white people I hadn’t a clue why the head resident insisted on rubbing my head for good luck while my dorm mates laughed. It was not until I telephoned my father and asked him what was meant by the behavior, of a guy who was nice enough to me, did I realize that I had been put down in the worst way. My father was furious as he explained to me that it was yet another indignity served up to me by a bigoted white person who didn’t even know or think that he was a bigot. That and similar incidents and slights have been a part of my life for all of my years. They have occurred in the military, in graduate school, in previous jobs as a faculty member and academic administrator at three other universities, and they have occurred at our beloved Fordham. Are all these people racist who do these things? That’s for them and you to judge. A few examples I have encountered at Fordham:

• An African American faculty member who ate in the LC cafeteria everyday was asked by a white faculty who she saw in the cafeteria with some regularity to go in to the kitchen and get something for her. • An African American female faculty candidate came to campus wearing the beginning dreadlocks with her hair knotted, and I was asked by a white faculty member why she was wearing her hair that way. • Shortly after I arrived at Fordham one faculty member of GSSS approached me and asked if another person was “out” to me yet as a gay person, as if I cared or as if it mattered.

Several years ago an undergraduate black work study student in my School came to me and said that her intelligence had been insulted during a class discussion when she asked a question of the professor. When she pursued an answer the reply was she really did not have the wherewithal to really understand what he was saying. I, in turn, spoke to the Dean of her School who declared that that kind of insult would not be tolerated on his shift. The next semester that adjunct was gone. At Fordham the behavior of that professor was not tolerated.

• A couple of months ago a Veteran of two tours in Iraq complained to me that he received a grade lower less than the one he had hoped for (honors graduate for HS and A’s in other classes) and asked the professor what he could do to make it up. According to him, he was told to just live with it because his people had trouble comprehending the nuances of the subject matter. We processed it, and he went back to his professor stating that he had sought consultation and required further explanation of his previous remarks. He received the grade he earned. At Fordham, we are serious about taking care of the whole person.

Do the words and actions of the persons with power I have mentioned here cause hurt, pain and despair, without a doubt. These are things described as micro aggressions which are “brief and commonplace daily verbal, behavioral, or environmental indignities, whether intentional or unintentional, that communicate hostile, derogatory, or negative slights and insults toward people of other races, sexual orientation, genders and class”. We do not have time or the inclination to accept that kind of behavior here and your presence here demonstrates that.

As I reflect on today and what has brought us here, I remember crosses being burned near where I grew up, I remember the head rubs in college in 1960 that were meant to insult me, I recall the crosses being burned at the 25th Infantry Division Headquarters in the combat zone and nooses being strung in trees in Chu Lai, RVN where African Americans, Latinos, and Gay men were carrying out their patriotic duties. I recall the arrests and pummeling of a pregnant woman who tried to intervene with policeman on the Eastside of Detroit as they were roughed up her teen aged son whose only offense was playing basket ball in the street and not moving fast enough when the cop car approached. These are all painful yet valuable recollections that remind me that bitterness has no place in my life.

I have grown to love Fordham University, and I grieve with you and for Fordham as we are confronted with all that we must do to make this a truly welcoming environment and a place that prepares the best of young people to be women and men in-service to others. As I end my career, I can think of no better place to end it than at dear Fordham. We have a lot of work to do in the months ahead, we will do the work, and we will succeed in righting the wrongs done to individuals and groups of people in our community, for this is Fordham. * * *

Monday, March 19, 2012

Fordham University professor Quamrul Haider, Ph.D., has been selected for the 2012 Independence Award in the category of “Contributions to Science by an Expatriate.”

This is the highest civilian award given by the Bangladeshi government to ten citizens/expatriates every year on the eve of the Bangladeshi Independence Day (March 26) for contributions to different areas and disciplines.

Most of them are given posthumously.

The award is being presented to Haider for confirming the existence of new nuclear matter, which he collaborated on with Dr. Lon-chang Liu, staff physicist at Los Alamos National Laboratory. The eta-mesic nucleus, an eta meson trapped inside a nucleus, is 100,000 times smaller than previously discovered mesic atoms. Haider and Liu had first predicted this in 1986.

The paper predicting the eta-mesic nucleus prompted a new subfield in nuclear physics called "mesic nuclear physics" and spurred other research on nuclear structure theory.

Haider, professor and chair of the Department of Physics, said he could not believe it.

“I have been living in the United States since 1975. It seems like there must have been a magical hand behind my nomination,” he said.

The ceremony will take place Osmani Memorial Auditorium in Dhaka on March 25. Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina will give the awards.

Fordham Alumni, students and friends, 1100 strong, filled two city blocks during Saturday’s St. Patrick’s Day parade on Fifth Avenue. It was the largest Fordham contingent that ever turned out to march, and the day was accommodating, with temperatures in the sixties and clear, sunny skies.

Revelers packed the streets on the morning of St. Patrick’s Day, their green-clad bodies rushing down 42nd Street like a raging emerald sea. It was quite a different scene on the 20th floor of the Yale Club, where Fordham hosted a more intimate pre-parade celebration.

But what the annual St. Patrick’s Day brunch lacked in noise and crowds, it made up for in spirit.

“Fordham has such a great Irish tradition and heritage. I’m so proud to be a part of it on St. Patrick’s Day,” said Sheila Fitzpatrick, LAW ’05, who was president of the Irish Students Association at Fordham Law. She brought her parents from Bay Ridge, and her husband, decked out in a fisherman’s sweater.

The Fitzpatricks and roughly 300 other guests joined speakers Gen. John (Jack) Keane, GSB ’66, former vice chief of staff of the U.S. Army, and bestselling suspense novelist Mary Higgins Clark, FCLC ’79, for the festivities before the parade, which was marched this year in honor of veterans of all wars.

Keane’s first order of business: To welcome the 30 or so Fordham student veterans in attendance, whose $50 brunch tickets were covered by alumni veterans of the University. The retired four-star general shared with guests what he came to learn about veterans in his 37-year military career.

“They are not about war; they are about selfless service,” he said.

“In my judgment, they do it for a simple yet profound sense of duty and they do it for one another,” he said. “We can never take that for granted and we at Fordham never will.”

Higgins Clark told the crowd that she used to gaze at the Rose Hill campus from her childhood home on Pelham Parkway. Wanting to set a good example for her five children after their father died, she took night classes at Fordham for “five great years.”

“My DNA is consistent with shamrocks,” said the wildly popular author. Of the three leaves, she said: “One is for Ireland; one is for Fordham University, and the third one will lead to God.”

Reflecting on the Yale Club setting, Joseph M. McShane, S.J., recalled a series of posters Fordham recreated in 2007 to celebrate 125 years of Fordham football. One depicted the 1951 Yale-Fordham game, which he recently found out was never played due to an outbreak of polio at Yale.

Fordham football players collected money to help the afflicted Yale students cover their medical expenses, delivering it to Yale’s president on what would have been game day.

Father McShane spoke of his deep “admiration for our students,” who, at that time, often came from the working-class apartment houses of the boroughs and yet, “collected money for the well-heeled students at Yale.”

After jumping to their feet to sing Fordham’s fight song, “The Ram,” guests joined hundreds of other Fordham parade marchers under big maroon and white balloons on 45th Street.

Michael Graham, GSB ’92, proudly showed off his niece and nephew, toddlers Madeline and Ryan, their faces adorned with shamrock stickers. He and his brother-in-law, Brendan Reynolds, GSB ’95, marched with their alma mater “because of the great Catholic education at Fordham,” he said.

Retired Col. Edward Winkler, FCRH ’67 and LAW ’72, served as one of Fordham’s banner bearers. “I’ve been very proud of Fordham all through my career,” he said. “It’s a great school, great people, and a great legacy.”

—Nicole LaRosa

The event was coordinated by the Office of Alumni Relations. Click here to view more photos from the parade and brunch.

Thursday, March 15, 2012

All clad in maroon baseball caps featuring the Fordham “F”, 170 alumni, family members, and friends gathered for the third annual Tampa Brunch and Baseball event on March 11.

Sponsored by Alumni Relations, the day included a Mass at the Jesuit High School’s St. Anthony Chapel led by Joseph M. McShane, S.J., Fordham’s president, and Daniel Gatti, S.J., Fordham’s alumni chaplain and interim director of alumni relations.

Brunch was held in the Yankee Pavilion at Steinbrenner Field. Peter Farrell, director of admissions, discussed Fordham’s achievements and Fr. McShane gave updates on the University and the Excelsior | Ever Upward | The Campaign for Fordham.

Following brunch, the group watched the Yankees triumph over the Phillies, 4-0. The Fordham group got a shout out by the announcer and on the scoreboard during the 7th inning stretch.

Following the Yankee win, several alumni got autographs from Yankee greats, Reggie Jackson and David Wells.

Pictured above from left to right: Sean Salai, David Paternostro (GSAS`11), and Daniel Gatti, S.J.

Wednesday, March 14, 2012

With just three weeks left to go, the leaders in Fordham’s annual RecycleMania challenge are beginning to come into focus, with a few surprises in the mix.

According to results released on Thursday, March 8 by consultant Wake Forest, Rose Hill’s Walsh Hall and Salice-Conley Hall lead the pack in the categories of most paper and cardboard and most glass, metal and plastic, respectively.

According to data compiled Sunday, March 4, Rose Hill’s Alumni South currently holds the title for the least amount of trash generated per person. Lincoln Center’s McMahon Hall won that category in last years’ challenge and lead in the category in the beginning this year, but Alumni South’s 3.72 pounds per person easily bested McMahon’s 5.82 pounds per person count.

When it comes to glass, metal and plastic, Salice-Conley Hall continues to outshine everyone, with 1.06 pounds per person. Tierney Hall, which was tied with Salice-Conley at week three, dropped to dead last, with .30 pounds per person. Tierney Hall also gave up its lead in the paper and cardboard category to Walsh Hall, which recycled an average of .95 pounds per resident.

Recyclemania continues through March 31. For more information, visit recyclemania.com.

Friday, March 9, 2012

Gregory Waldrop, S.J., was appointed executive director of University art collections in an announcement made Thursday, March 9 by Fordham Provost Stephen Freedman, Ph.D.

Father Waldrop, a member of Fordham’s Art History and Music Department since 2009, is an expert in Italian art from 1400 to 1600, and his scholarly research and writing deal primarily with the religious culture and iconography of the late Middle Ages and early Renaissance in Italy, with a particular focus on 15th century Sienese painting.

He was a Rome Prize Fellow at the American Academy in Rome in 2006-2008. He has taught in both the medieval and renaissance areas and will continue his association with the Art History and Music Department.

He earned his M.A. and Ph.D. in the history of art from the University of California, Berkeley. He also holds an M.S. in journalism from Northwestern University and a B.A. in English, magna cum laude with distinction in the major, from Yale University.

His credentials in theology include the S.T.B., magna cum laude, from the Pontificia Universitas Gregoriana in Rome and the Th.M., with honors, from Weston Jesuit School of Theology.

In his new role, Fr. Waldrop will work collaboratively with academic units across the University to enhance Fordham’s prominence and visibility within New York City’s richly diverse artistic communities and cultural institutions. He will also oversee an estimated 1,000 works of fine art spread at the University’s three campuses.

Wednesday, March 7, 2012

These days, the controversies surrounding Roe v. Wade are taking a unique turn. Opponents of abortion propel their argument on the grounds that fetuses have separate legal rights (moral value notwithstanding) from their pregnant mothers.

In an effort to shed light on another side of the issue, the Women’s Studies Program, the Peace and Justice Studies Program, and the Department of Sociology and Anthropology will host a lecture this week on the implications of these “personhood” measures for pregnant women overall.

Farah Diaz-Tello, a staff attorney for the National Advocates for Pregnant Women, will explain what personhood measures are and how they would play out for pregnant women.

For instance, Mississippi Ballot Initiative 26, if passed, would have severed the legal bond between a pregnant woman and the baby she carries, Diaz-Tello said. As a class distinct from fetuses, pregnant women could be denied rights such as bodily integrity and the power of making informed medical decisions.

“This discussion is important because it will show through case examples from around the country that laws that create separate legal status for fetuses affect all pregnant women, not only those who wish to prevent or end a pregnancy,” Diaz-Tello said.

“Whether or not people identify as pro-life or support abortion rights, ‘personhood’ legislation is overly broad and can result in the criminalization of women who want to carry their pregnancies to term.”

A dedicated birth activist, Diaz-Tello also serves on the board of Backline, an organization that offers support for women regarding issues of pregnancy, parenting, adoption, and abortion. In addition, while a student at CUNY School of Law, she worked to prepare expert testimony with the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights on Mexico’s responsibility to address the femicide in Ciudad Juárez, Chihuahua.

Monday, March 5, 2012

Held at the historic Cliff House in San Francisco, the evening reception was the final event of the University’s western swing through Arizona and California, where Fordham’s influence continues to thrive, from the rise in student applications to the increased alumni participation in University events and alumni chapter programs.

At the reception, Rongchen Zhu, a senior at Quarry Lane School, a private college preparatory school in Dublin, Calif., spoke with Fordham parents Edward H. Davis and Cynthia Davis about the University and their daughter, Briana, a freshman at Fordham College at Rose Hill.

“The personal attention professors and staff have already given to me really matters to me,” said Zhu, who was recently accepted to Fordham as an early action applicant. “Everyone at Fordham just wants you to be the best you can be. They really care about you as a person. It’s not just a line in a brochure.”

Like Zhu, more and more students from California are interested in attending Fordham.

Peter Farrell, director of undergraduate admission at Fordham, told those in attendance that California recently passed Massachusetts as the third largest feeder state for the University, behind only New York and New Jersey.

He also said this year’s applicant pool is one of the best in the University’s history, pointing out that Fordham is now a top 50 destination for National Merit scholars.

“These students are demonstrably extraordinary,” he said. “We are desperately interested in getting them to call Fordham home.”

Joseph M. McShane, S.J., president of Fordham, celebrated Fordham’s Californian students as “a golden crop from the Golden state” and invited prospective students to come to “the most remarkable Jesuit school” that is “brighter with promise than ever before.”

“If you come to Fordham, you will never be the same,” he said. “You’ll be yourself, but more so. You will be restless for the entirety of your life, and this will make every Jesuit happy.”

Fordham parent Patrick Pahl said his son Aaron, a freshman at Fordham College at Rose Hill, is working a lot more than he expected, but he’s also having a lot more fun too.

“He keeps long, tough hours,” said Pahl, “but it’s worth it. I look forward to him taking advantage of Fordham’s alumni network, both in New York and out here in California.

"It’s nice to know Fordham alumni look out for each other.”

One such alumnus, Anthony Dapice, FCRH ’91, relocated to San Francisco seven years ago. He said the alumni network in Northern California helped ease his transition.

“The Fordham community here is still pretty tightly knit,” he said. “I had no idea. There’s a lot of Fordham pride here.”

Margaux Weeke, FCLC ’10, who recently moved to San Francisco, agreed, noting Fordham events like the regional reception and future chapter events, like upcoming Day on the Bay in April, would help her get settled in her new city.

“It’s a great way to meet people,” she said, “and get involved in the Bay Area.”

In Phoenix a night earlier, more than 95 Fordham alumni, parents, and prospective students gathered in the Arizona Biltmore, where Phoenix Cardinals quarterback John Skelton, a 2010 alumnus of the Gabelli School of Business, recounted his journey from El Paso, Texas, to the Bronx.

“El Paso is a long way from New York,” he said. “Like anyone going across country to go to school, I was scared. I was nervous. But it was amazing how welcoming everyone is at Fordham, how welcoming new students are, teachers, and priests. It’s a wonderful community there.”

Before mingling with his extended Fordham family, Skelton remarked on how Fordham's reach continues to extend beyond New York City.

“I think it’s amazing that so many people can come to a Fordham event in Arizona," he said. "Fordham’s reputation is growing.”

—Miles Doyle, FCRH ’01

Image: Cardinals quarterback John Skelton, a 2010 alumnus of the Gabelli School of Business, talks with Daniel Gatti, S.J., Fordham's interim director of alumni relations and alumni chaplain, at the Phoenix Alumni Reception, which was held at the Arizona Biltmore on Monday, Feb. 27. (Photo by Peter Vander Stoep.)

Kenneth R. Davis | Professor and Area Chair of Law and Ethics | Fordham Schools of BusinessRobert F. Hurley | Professor of Management | Fordham Schools of BusinessSteven B. Raymar | Assistant Professor of Finance, Faculty Coordinator for Global Business HonorsProgram and Assistant Finance Area Chair | Fordham Schools of BusinessBarbara Kail | Associate Professor | Graduate School of Social ServiceTracy E. Higgins | Professor of Law | School of LawIan Weinstein | Professor of Law and Associate Dean for Clinical and Experiential ProgramsSchool of LawMark Chapman | Associate Professor of African and African American StudiesFordham College at Rose HillRobert R. Grimes, S.J. | Associate Professor of Music and Dean of Fordham College at Lincoln CenterJoseph W. Koterski, S.J. | Associate Professor of Philosophy and Master of Queen’s Court ResidentialCollege for Freshmen | Fordham College at Rose Hill and Graduate Schoolof Arts and SciencesMatthew Maguire | Professor of Theatre, Director of Theatre ProgramFordham College at Lincoln CenterEmily Rosenbaum | Professor of Sociology | Fordham College at Rose Hilland Graduate School of Arts and Sciences

Friday, March 2, 2012

Fordham alumnus Don DeLillo, one of the country’s most celebrated and accomplished writers, was recently named a finalist for the PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction for his first collection of short stories, The Angel Esmeralda: Nine Stories.

The national prize, given annually, honors outstanding works of fiction by living American writers. Also nominated for this year’s award are Russell Banks (Lost Memory of Skin), Anita Desai (The Artist of Disappearance), Steven Millhauser (We Others: New and Selected Stories), and Julie Otsuka (The Buddha in the Attic).

The winner will be announced on March 26.

Writing about The Angel Esmeralda in The New York Review of Books, Charles Baxter described the typical DeLillo tale as “a diagnosis of a zeitgeist malady we never knew we had, and in these stories the malady is one of spellbound fixation. As a diagnostician, DeLillo has achieved a very particular kind of greatness that gives his stories and novels a distinctive atmosphere and psychic temperature, that of a cool low-grade fever; and his gifts, in this specialized sphere, are, for a contemporary American writer, unsurpassed.”

A native of the Bronx, DeLillo graduated from Fordham College at Rose Hill in 1958, where, he once told The New York Times, “the Jesuits taught me to be a failed ascetic.”

He won a National Book Award in 1985 for White Noise, arguably his most popular novel and a seminal work in American postmodernism.

In 2009, Fordham Theatre produced DeLillo’s play The Day Room, which debuted in 1986, following the release of White Noise. Prior to the play’s Fordham premiere, DeLillo visited with the cast and crew.

DeLillo is not the only Fordham alumnus who has been nominated for a major fiction award in the past year. Andrew Krivak, GSAS ’95, was nominated for a National Book Award in 2011 for his novel The Sojourn, which was published by Bellevue Literary Press.